


Nothing More Than Hope

by Rhiannon87



Category: Uncharted
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhiannon87/pseuds/Rhiannon87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sully spent days trapped with Marlowe and her people. Nate spent days wandering the desert.</p>
<p>Elena spent days waiting and wondering if she'd ever see her family again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing More Than Hope

“ _Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn.”_

_\- Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts_

_\---_

The anger came slowly. At first, adrenaline kept her from thinking about anything more than getting back across the airfield to her Jeep without being caught. She needed to get back to _her_ car-- taking off with a stolen vehicle while leaving the one registered in her name behind seemed like a poor plan.

But by the time Elena got into her Jeep, her hands were shaking so badly it took three tries before she started the ignition. How _dare_ he leave her behind. She’d done all the work, gotten the guns and maps and information, and he left her. Again. He said he wanted to protect her, keep her from getting hurt, but he never saw the way he kept hurting her by leaving. Or he did see and just didn’t care.

So close to dawn, the roads were nearly empty, and she made it back to her building before the sun was fully up. Her hands were still shaking as she walked up the stairs, and the warring mix of anger, fear, and grief made her feel nauseous. But it wasn’t until she was slumped against the wall of the shower, hot water rinsing away blood and sweat and dirt, that she let herself cry.

By the time she'd dressed and emerged from her bedroom, the sun was up, filling the apartment with light. Elena stared at the empty living room and ran a hand through her damp hair. She didn’t have a plan for this. She was supposed to be with Nate, hiding out on the plane, waiting to catch up with the convoy. Not here. There was nothing she could do here.

Elena took a deep breath. No. Not nothing. She still had contacts in the city. She could follow up on Marlowe’s people and find out if anyone else was heading into the desert. Maybe there was a way to follow them. Slim hope, but it was better than nothing. She’d have some coffee, eat breakfast, give people time to wake up, and then start making phone calls. She’d find something. She had to.

*

There was nothing.

Marlowe’s agents had vanished from the city entirely. She’d withdrawn all of them to the desert, either on the plane or in the convoys. There was no one to follow, no one to question, no one to tell her what had happened to Nate and Sully. She couldn’t even get any information about the plane—it had been an unofficial, unscheduled departure, only permitted thanks to the bribes Marlowe handed out. None of the airport officials were willing to admit that the plane existed, much less that it had taken off. They’d covered up the shootings at the airfield, too. Nothing about it in the local news.

At least that meant that when her producer called, he wasn’t asking her to go look into it. Elena wasn’t sure she’d have been able to hold it together if she’d been asked to investigate the shootout she’d been part of. She was barely holding it together anyway.

“Are you all right?” her producer asked, after she zoned out for the third time.

‘No, I’m not, because my father-in-law has been kidnapped by an Elizabethan cult and my estranged husband went off into the desert to save him and I don’t know if I’ll ever see either of them again’ wouldn’t exactly go over well. “I’m fine,” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. “Just a little under the weather today.”

“Will you be able to get those numbers on the protests, or…?”

“Yeah,” Elena said. She could have said no, claimed illness, and he’d have let her off the hook. But if she didn’t have something to do, she’d go crazy. “Yeah, I’ll get them to you by the end of the day.”

“Good.”

They talked about the story for a few minutes more before hanging up. Elena checked her watch and tried to do the math on the speed of the cargo plane and the distance from the city to the convoy. Nate might have caught up with them by now. Maybe he’d rescued Sully already and they were on their way back to the city. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger and closed her eyes. After what he’d done to her—what he’d done to their marriage—she wasn’t sure if she could forgive him. She still loved him, but she didn’t know if she had it in her to give him another chance. But she wanted to make that decision on her own, not have it made for her because he was dead.

She swallowed hard and went to get her notes. She’d get her story done, and maybe Nate and Sully would be back by evening. It was hard, but she had to hold onto some kind of hope.

*

Evening turned into night turned into morning with no sign of them. She tried calling Sully--she didn’t think either of them would be so thoughtless as to not let her know that they’d returned safely, but she’d rather that they had instead of still being out there somewhere. She’d scream at them both if they’d come back and hadn’t told her, but at least they’d have come back.

Sully’s phone went straight to voice mail, just as it had for the past three days. She didn’t leave a message.

She made herself stop checking the phone and focused on her work, going over everything three times to make sure she hadn't screwed it up. And when she couldn't take it anymore, she grabbed her phone and her keys and drove back to the airport. Maybe her contacts had missed something. Maybe some of Marlowe's people had come back. Maybe somehow she'd turn a corner and her family would be there.

She spent an hour walking the terminal before she forced herself to leave and go back to her apartment. They weren't there. They weren’t going to be there. And this wasn't like Nepal-- she didn't have any way of following Nate, not this time.

*

The second night, she didn't sleep. She tried. She laid in bed, in the dark, and tried to sleep. But she couldn't stop thinking. _They should be back by now_ , over and over, the thought chasing itself in circles in her mind.

Maybe the convoy had gotten farther into the desert than she'd thought. Maybe it was taking them longer to get back. Maybe they were still alive, still coming back to her. Maybe.

_Let's face it. This is-- this is a million-to-one shot_.

There was no one to hear her, but Elena buried her face in her pillow to muffle her sobs anyway.

*

She went back to the airfield on the third day. It wasn't exactly a conscious decision-- she'd been driving home from an interview (she'd tried her best to act normal, but her producer still pulled her aside after and asked what was wrong, sent her home even after she said she was fine) and just found herself taking the exit.

This time, she only stayed for thirty minutes. She knew no one would be there. But she still had to see.

That evening, she called Nate's cell phone, for the first time in months. It went straight to voice mail, as she knew it would-- he told her he'd lost his phone when Marlowe kidnapped him. All she'd wanted was to hear his voice. But in the time since she'd last called him, he'd gotten a new phone, and he hadn't recorded a new message. The sound of the computerized voice almost made her throw her phone across the room.

*

Four days since Nate jumped on that plane, six days since Marlowe's people took Sully, eight days since Sully called asking her to get them into Yemen. She wondered how long it would be before she stopped counting, before there were so many days between her and the last time she'd seen them that she couldn't count anymore.

Four days was already too long. If they were going to come back, they would have by now. Elena paced the length of the airport terminal (stupid, stupid, so _stupid_ , they wouldn't be here, why did she keep coming back), twisting her ring around her finger and trying to make herself accept it. Nate and Sully weren't coming back. If she accepted it, she could start grieving, and eventually, she could start moving on.

But she couldn't do it. They hadn't come back alive, no, but they also hadn't been brought back dead, and so she couldn't let go of hope yet. If they weren't back in a week, she told herself, then she'd accept that they were dead. She'd make the phone calls, arrange the funeral, fly back to the U.S. to pack up Nate and Sully's things. Do all the things she'd have to do as a widow, as a woman who'd lost her family for good this time.

“Ma'am?”

Elena turned towards the concerned-sounding security guard. She blinked hard and cleared her throat before speaking. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?” He frowned. “Can I help you find something?”

She bit her tongue hard to stop the near-hysterical laugh that threatened to burst from her. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I don't think you can.”

*

Her producer called and gently told her to take the day off. “You're not feeling well,” he said when she argued with him. “I'd rather have you take a day or two and come back with your head in the game.”

She didn't know how to tell him that she'd need more than a day or two. She didn't know how to tell him that sitting at her apartment, alone with nothing but her thoughts and fears, sounded like hell. So she just agreed and hung up the phone.

She straightened up her apartment. She went to the market and bought another week's worth of groceries. She contacted her local sources again, just in case they'd heard something new, seen any of Marlowe's people in the city. (They hadn't, of course.) She checked her phone every few minutes and waited for a knock at the door.

She guessed that this would be her life now, forever wondering about what happened and what she could have done differently to save them.

*

Six days. Tomorrow would be seven, and the day she was supposed to give up on them. She called and told her producer she was going to stay home to work on some research. Today was it, the last chance, and if they came back, she didn't want to miss them.

It took nearly all her energy to concentrate on the interview transcripts in her hand. She had to go over every sentence twice, at least, and she forgot things she'd read two pages prior. It was pointless, trying to get anything done, but trying was better than sitting around and doing nothing at all.

The knock at the door hit her like a shot. Elena froze in place, staring at the floor, unable to move for a few seconds. It could be Sully or Nate outside her door. It could be someone from the embassy, coming to tell her that they'd recovered two bodies. It could be someone from down the hall wanting to borrow a cup of sugar. She set down her report and got to her feet. Her hands were shaking as she reached the door, and she pressed her palms against her thighs for a moment, trying to still them. It didn't work. She took a deep breath, then made herself open the door before she could think about it.

Sully had his hand half-raised, probably to knock again, but he let it fall to his side when he saw her. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said with a small, almost sad smile.

“Sully?” Elena glanced past him to the empty hall. No sign of Nate. The relief she’d felt at seeing Sully faded, drowned out by returning fear. She hadn’t imagined a scenario where Sully would make it back without him, but… She looked back at him and tried to find her voice to ask if her husband was dead.

“Nate’s fine,” Sully said before she could get the words out. “He’s fine, alive and in one piece. Don’t worry.”

She swallowed hard. “Oh.” They were both okay. They’d both come back. Elena blinked, her vision going blurry with sudden tears, as six days’ worth of stress and worry and grief all came crashing down. She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. “Good. That's... that's good...”

Sully moved towards her, arms halfway raised for a hug, but then he stopped himself. Elena shook her head and threw her arms around him. She didn’t give a damn about what was frowned upon here, not now. She just needed a hug. “I thought you guys weren’t coming back,” she managed, voice shaking.

Sully patted her back. “Had a couple close calls,” he said. “But we’re both okay. I promise.”

She sniffled and stepped away, scrubbing her hand across her eyes. “What the hell happened?”

“It’s a long story--” Sully began. Elena stepped to the side, holding the door open in clear invitation. He chuckled. “All right. But you have to tell me about how you planned the rescue in the first place.”

Elena nodded. “Deal.”


End file.
